The present invention relates to equipment tracking systems, and more particularly, to an equipment tracking system that provides current and accurate configuration management information regarding the physical status of computer-related equipment.
The assignee of the present invention currently has the responsibility for the hardware and software engineering, installations and maintenance of institutional personal computers and their peripheral equipment (including data communications equipment). This equipment is dispersed in many offices across many on-site and off-site facilities. Crucial to providing effective and efficient engineering, installation and maintenance services is the existence of current and accurate configuration information. Such information has not heretofore existed. What does exist are heavily manpower dependent processes that produce a mainframe database that provides stale, inaccurate and incomplete information. Some of the contributors to this yield includes multiple transcribing/data entry (each a point for introducing error), multiple process queues (located in paperwork or a data entry queue), and the reliance upon someone to accurately report the physical changes.
Previous attempts at improving configuration management, focused upon what can be done to the existing processes to make them better in terms of accuracy, timeliness, and cost effectiveness. Many "business-as-usual" efforts have resulted in many sub-optimizations of the existing configuration management system. Collectively, they have not measurably improved the configuration management (CM) system, because they have not modeled the configuration management maintenance process (chain of significant events) and evaluated existing tools capabilities relative to that process.
A model of the configuration management system is shown in the table below.
__________________________________________________________________________ /--------------------------------------------time------------------------- --------------------------&gt; __________________________________________________________________________ Hardware Change --&gt; Report the Change --&gt; Update CM Database --&gt; Do for Next Authorized Manual by configur- Multiple responsible By Service ation sheets Information duplicated Request (SR) Multiple handoffs across multiple databases By Maintenance Prob- Reported out of time Found by accident lem Request (MPR) sequence (controlled/owned by others) Unauthorized Updating is an add-on function (not part of the change process) __________________________________________________________________________
With the existing system there is no way, other than by chance or a physical audit, to detect an unauthorized configuration change. Even if a change is detected, the configuration management system requires many functional and organizational hand-offs from the first step in the reporting process to the final step in the database update process. Each handoff involves manual transcription (chance for errors) of the source information. Procedurally, everyone is responsible; therefore no one is responsible. Everyone does their best, but no one can perform better than the system permits. Armed with this knowledge, it was determined that a system engineering approach must be taken to the entire system and philosophy of configuration management in a distributed environment.
Fundamental to effective configuration management is current and accurate data collection for all changes to the equipment configuration. Data collection includes detecting the change, reporting the change, and updating the change into a configuration management database. For the purposes of the present invention, automation is defined as the automatic operation or control of a process, equipment, or a system. It is further defined as the techniques and equipment used to bring about automatic operation or control of a process or system. It has been found that simply migrating part or all of a given work function to an electronic data processing or computer environment does not constitute automation. Therefore, simply using electronic data processing hardware, software and databases does not constitute automation.
The purpose of using automation is to perform a process more efficiently and effectively than it could be accomplished manually. Where a process for achieving an aim already exists, the proper implementation of automation must yield measurable cost and/or time savings over the manual approach for that process and must not detract from the product's quality. The present invention achieves automation of an automated configuration management system by using electronic data processing as an in-line (integral) tool that contributes directly to the process.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,766,540 issued to Schopfer et al., for "Appliance Removal Alarm System for Motels" describes a system whose primary function is to detect disconnected devices. It lacks the ability for a relocated unit to report its new location. This system does not provide for history logging of disconnected/relocated equipment nor does it provide the capacity to query individual locations (rooms/areas) for the ID numbers of equipment located at that location.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,920,488 issued to Filley, for "Physical Inventory System" is a non-real time location system. This system requires that each tracked item be labeled with a bar code which is scanned at random intervals. This system's configuration data is valid only until the first piece of equipment is moved and is not valid again until the next time the facility is scanned. This system does not provide for continuous scanning and recording of the configuration of the equipment, with no human intervention required.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,141,078 issued to Bridges, Jr. et al., for "Library Circulation Control System" uses similar techniques and is generally the same as the system of U.S. Pat. No. 4,920,488.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,038,320 issued to Health et al., for "Computer System with Automatic Initialization of Pluggable Option Cards" describes a system that is used to control and configure the internal interface boards in devices such as personal computers, workstations and minicomputers. It provides no method of tracking the individual ID numbers of peripheral devices such as printers modems, terminals or units not connected a local area network. This system does not provide for universal tracking of equipment without requiring connectivity of the unit to any networks. This system could be configured to limit operation if a particular peripheral device is attached to another system. This system does not provide for automated equipment tracking that is transparent to the user, allowing for free movement and reconfiguration of the hardware.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,862,355 issued to Neumann et al., for "System Permitting Peripheral Interchangeability During System Operation" describes a system that is used to buffer and distribute data between various types of CPU's and peripherals. It provides no configuration control, management capability, or monitoring. It also lacks remote sensing capability.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,636,950 issued to Caswell, for "Inventory Management System Using Transponders Associated with Specific Products" most closely resembles the present invention. The theory of operation and scan characteristics, however, are very different than those of the present invention. This prior art invention is designed to scan for a certain element ID or group of ID's. The operator sets the scanner to search for a series of ID's until an acknowledgement signal is received from an inventory item with a transceiver preprogrammed with the ID number.
This system requires that each transceiver be programmed with all current transceiver numbers. This system can tell what equipment is located in a room when that equipment was installed, but it cannot recognize and report the identity of equipment which the user relocates into another room. This system cannot be used to determine which CPU is attached to which monitor and printer. The invention described in this patent does not have this ability to determine immediately the detailed inventory of a particular workstation. The invention described in this patent does can only tell the operator what equipment is in an area. This invention is used to track "high-value products e.g. a motorcycle or the like . . ." which would imply that the unit cost may be rather high. It also uses RF transmission which is not suitable for Federal Government facilities, for example, where highly sensitive equipment can be operationally contaminated by stray signal transmissions and where secrecy considerations are required. This system also requires the modification of the manufacturing process of the equipment to be tracked and does not appear to be universally adaptable to all types of devices.